Talk:Poliomyelitis
Found myself in a discussion on the transmission of polio the other day. FDR contracted the illness in 1921 when he was invited to appear at some boy scout camp. Quite a few of the boys returned home showing signs of polio, and the counselors figured out what they, and FDR, had in common: They'd all gone swimming in a certain pool on a certain afternoon. (That's according to my tour guide when I went to Hyde Park; Wikipedia has a different version. I think the Roosevelt Presidential Library's employee is the more credible.) This happened in 1921. I can't help thinking that it's a terrible coincidence that FDR should contract the illness under such serendipitous circumstances in two different timelines. Also, it's quite unusual for polio to strike during adulthood, and Roosevelt was 39 at the time. There's something called Guillain-Barre Syndrome which has similar symptoms and does commonly afflict adults. Turtle Fan 23:26, November 22, 2011 (UTC) :Has anyone suggested Guillian-Barre for FDR with the benefit of hindsight? One must admit, that's a hell of a coincidence that FDR starts showing symptoms of the adult polio-like disease the same time a bunch of kids show the actual thing. ::It's been suggested. The improbability of FDR being exposed to a known source of polio and at the same time contracting a different but related disease is one of the bigger guns in the "No, it was polio" argument. Apparently the only way to know for sure would be to test his spinal fluid, and there isn't any available. Turtle Fan 02:03, November 23, 2011 (UTC) :To this day I wish HT had followed through and had FDR (or his analog) injured in the GW as he started to hint at in TCCH (before changing in mid-stream in the same volume). I guess it's possible that FDR could have contracted the disease under similar circumstances, but as you say, it stretches some credibility. Now, Flora does say that he'd contracted it over twenty years before during a seen set in 1942. Obviously, 21 is greater than 20, but that could also mean as many as 24 years before, the way HT estimates time frames. If it were 25 years before, for example, HT would have said "about 25 years before". ::You know I'd forgotten about the "more than twenty years" reference. I was about to suggest that in this timeline, for all we know he contracted the disease as a child, as most patients do. That could also explain why his paralysis prevented him from attaining the presidency, whereas in OTL it obviously didn't: Without the memory of a vigorous adult life, he was less inclined to fight to regain it. But now you've torpedoed that. *sigh* Turtle Fan 02:03, November 23, 2011 (UTC) :::Sorry. I looked it up myself, hoping that HT had vagued it up. TR 04:33, November 23, 2011 (UTC) ::::Nothing to be sorry for on your part. One of the most annoying things about this hobby is the need to reflect HT's story elements faithfully, no matter how illogical. It almost gives me sympathy for the people on places like the Star Wars and Doctor Who Wikia, where they play fast and loose with the canonicity of source material. Turtle Fan 05:37, November 23, 2011 (UTC) :I wonder whether or not having FDR appear in the series at all was HT's idea or whether it was an editorial suggestion. I remember during one of those fabled on-line chats someone asked point blank "Are Churchill and FDR going appear?" and HT responding with a simple "No." This was at the time B&I came out, so obviously the man can change his mind. And even those appearances in TCCH are pretty clearly "He's FDR, but I'm going to use a whole series of descriptors that make it clear who is but are completely tortured in the way I'll dance around the issue." As if HT wanted to quickly throw out a sop to the people wanting FDR without having to commit to having FDR actually appear. TR 00:02, November 23, 2011 (UTC) ::Like the Hitler appearance? :::Oh it was even more stilted in TCCH than Hitler. "The Secretary of War who was a relative of the last Democrat President before Hoover and paralysed thanks to some disease...." I'm paraphrasing only a little. That's essentially how HT wrote that. At least Hitler actually appeared in TCCH. TR 04:33, November 23, 2011 (UTC) ::::He was in the funeral procession, wasn't he? Or was that just a cocktease? Turtle Fan 05:37, November 23, 2011 (UTC) ::I'm normally not one to criticize AH writers including historical figures in decades-old ATLs, but I could have done without these gratuitous appearances. In FDR's case, when HT went back and said "Hmm, let me give him a real role," at least it served a purpose in the story. He was a pretty good character, though whether HT could have found a more obscure historical character or invented a fictional character--another Daniel MacArthur, perhaps--is a question worth asking. ::On the other hand, we spent an awful lot of time back in the day saying "I wonder what happened to this or that person in TL-191?" so I guess the canonical appearances of so many important historical figures, even appearances that are so awkward and forced, is something we shouldn't necessarily disparage. Turtle Fan 02:03, November 23, 2011 (UTC) :::I go back and forth on that. On the one hand, some logic should enter into AH, and almost no-one should appear from OTL in most AH works, especially decades after the POD. On the other hand, the AH is fiction first and foremost, and there is at this time no way to "prove" an ATL. So we can crunch numbers, but we can't meaningfully xperiment, so it's always a hypothetical. TR 04:33, November 23, 2011 (UTC) ::::Another thing to remember is that AH is a subgenre of historical fiction these days, so its goal is to entertain, and hstorical fiction is more entertaining when famous people appear. AH as historical fiction is also why Hitler's invaded Britain a billion times and never once refused to help Mussolini disentangle himself from Greece, though the latter was arguably the bigger gamechanger. I do generally think AH as a mass entertainment media is a good thing, though. The alternative is scholarly AH. I've read some of that, and aside from generally being boring, it's very vague and noncommital, full of "At this point it's possible that a hypothetical Spanish commander would have decided that defending some New World colony would not have been worthwhile. This in turn could have encouraged British mercantilists to . . . " Also, scholars don't have much interest in AH, so if it were left to them we'd see very little of it. Turtle Fan 05:37, November 23, 2011 (UTC)